$10 for a lion dance
Oakridge Mall is offering stores the services of a lion dancing team that will be travelling through the mall, dancing and blessing stores on Chinese New Year. Or at least those stores that pay the extra “protection” money. Their letter to merchants reads:
If you wish to have the Lion Dance Team stop at your store… We will distrubte a red “li-see” envelope to your store on the day of the event, which his (sic) to be hung in front of your door/storefront with some lettuc as the lion Dance Team approaches your store on Saturday, February 4, 2006.
What sort of religious protection racket is this? Do they sell pieces of wood to represent parts of the cross Jesus was cursified on for $15 during Easter? Do they threaten to have the Frankenstein monster rough up your store manager if you don’t pay $30 during their Halloween drive?
Also have I spent my life misunderestimating the sheer size of Chinese New Year? In the interior it’s mainly ignored or at most seen as another day to buy illegal fireworks from native lands and shoot them off when you can’t see any cops.
There are many mysticisms associated with Chinese New Year that have to do with wishing for prosperity in the upcoming year. Traditionally, the lion dance is used to ward off demons from businesses and communities and to bring good fortune to all.
(There are several hypotheses here for the origin of the dance - http://www.hongluck.org/festival.html)
I think businesses would comply because it shows their respect to the Chinese culture and Chinese people are a significant portion of patrons at many businesses in GVR.
Finally, it’s a really fun show!
(If you think it’s huge here, in China they arrange weekends-as-workdays in order that there are two weeks of national holiday!)
To have fun though, at one lion dance I saw, the business hung the lettuce with the money very, very high. The point seemed to be to make the dancers work harder, they had to be more dramatic as they “elongated” their lion by adding more dancers until three were piled up, each sitting on the other’s shoulders, and, possibly, to keep customers in the store - everyone couldn’t wait to find out whether or not this lion would ever get that money.
You might tell your boss to hang the money up high - maybe people will decide to buy stuff after having a real good show?
The money is usually for charity so don’t be too quick to judge.
It’s typically good form to note that the money is for charity if it actually is. Also a good idea since more people are willing to donate. There was nothing on the memo about charity.